From the archive, 27 December 1972: Truman obituary – into the deep end at 50

Harry S Truman, the 33rd president of the United States, works at his desk in 1945. Photograph: Getty Images

The American Presidency has gone to many of the "little men" from the "grass roots" country in whom the national tradition likes to see its fittest leaders; several men, too, have come into the office by the accident of the death of the elected President, sometimes of a President of such stature that to follow him must be a hard task. Both these things happened to Harry S. Truman. But no man has reached the Presidency in such circumstances and faced such hard and momentous decisions. And if the small change of Truman's decisions, especially on routine matters of domestic politics and administration, was often questionable or downright bad, very few of his decisions on the overriding matters of world affairs can be so questioned; many, on the contrary, were courageous, swift, and right.

In the Senate Truman was at first an inconspicuous ranker in the Democratic big battalions and a straightforward New Dealer. What made his name was his chairmanship during the Second World War of an investigation committee which (ironically in the light of later Congressional investigations) did much good work in cutting down waste in war production and in Government departments.

It was this that made it possible for the Democrats to nominate him as their candidate to the Vice-Presidency in 1944. There was nothing inevitable about Truman's elevation to an office made unusually important by the President's failing health. Then, on April 13, 1945, little more than a month after the inauguration, Roosevelt died and Truman became President.

It is a measure of the burden that then fell on Truman that within four months of taking office he had taken part in the Potsdam Conference and made the decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan. For some time the burden was more than he could manage successfully. Amid the American reaction against the strains of war he could scarcely have done anything to slow down demobilisation and so keep a precious asset in dealing with Russia – but then American estimates of Russian intentions were not clear in those first days. At home the Democratic party was tending more and more to creak and divide after 12 years in office, and the removal of Roosevelt's managing hand.

What with mistakes in the early delays of the Administration, and the recurrent deadlock with Congress, his first term alone would earn him no very notable name. But his victory in 1948, which astounded everybody, changed this. It was a remarkable feat to lose part of the South to the Dixiecrats and yet carry the day.

Truman's foreign policy is the story of America's assumption of responsibilities all over the world, from the "Truman Doctrine" (which gave aid to Greece and Turkey in 1947) onward. The Marshall Plan, the Berlin airlift, the North Atlantic Treaty, the decision to make the hydrogen bomb, the Point Four policy which he expounded at stages along the road away from his second inauguration were isolation and towards the organisation and headship of the free countries. It was Truman who resisted aggression in Korea in 1950; and it was he who finally dismissed General MacArthur in 1951.

His reputation must rest on these decisions as much as on anything. They were notable, like other decisions of his, for courage and for improvisation. Truman's improvisations were sometimes hasty and mistaken; but when the time came to decide, he did decide, and for a man of whom few would have expected much at the start, he was curiously undwarfed by the occasion.

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